Universal Music Takes on iTunes — Universal chief Doug Morris is enlisting other big music players for a service to challenge the Jobs juggernaut — Relationships in the entertainment world can be famously fraught. And few are more so these days than the one between Steve Jobs and Universal Music chief Doug Morris.

Universal's Subscription Plan: Too Little, Too Late? — Businessweek "has learned" about a story Paul Resnikoff broke at Digital Music News more than a month ago: Vivendi's Universal Music Group is exploring some kind of subscription service, and is trying to enlist the help of the other labels.

Let's force people to take our music — It's hard to know where to start with Universal's rumoured TotalMusic plan, which Business Week has just written about (although as Techdirt points out, Digital Music News first had the story weeks ago). Apparently the idea is to get all the record labels together …

BEA To Oracle: "Your Bid Is Too Low"; This Could Get Ugly — BEA (BEAS) has issued a statement in response to Oracle's (ORCL) unsolicited $17-a-share takeover bid: and they're asserting that the offer is too low. BEA notes that the letter was sent to Oracle yesterday, before the bid was announced.

Icahn pitches a gem as Oracle bids for BEA — Commentary: Agitator looks to make $200 million or more from astute pick — LONDON (MarketWatch) — Carl Icahn's still got game. — Less than a month after the activist investor revealed an 8.5% stake in software maker BEA Systems …

More Gmail storage coming for all — When people ask me about my job, one of the common questions I get is, "Where does Gmail put all that mail?" I generally answer by pointing them to a web site like this one. While that's not exactly how it works, we do spend a lot of time working …

LinkedIn Plans to Open Up in a Closed Sort of Way — Dan Nye, the chief executive of LinkedIn, has looked closely at the frenzy around Facebook, and has made a crucial decision: There will be no food fights on LinkedIn. — Yes, he's rushing to copy the electronic underpinnings …

Road to Mac OS X Leopard: Time Machine — Time Machine is one of the most visually prominent new features demonstrated in Mac OS X Leopard, even if the core idea of backups is as old — or perhaps older — than the concept of having any data worthy of being restored.

NYT Adds Reader Comments to Front Page! * — We're always impressed with the New York Times' (NYT) progressive use of its web site, but seeing reader comments above the fold on the Home page was still startling. Hats off to the company's web team for this smart move!

The Clock is Ticking for Joost — There's a time bomb out there with Joost's name on it. Full-screen, broadcast-quality video streams—the main selling point of Joost's peer-to-peer Internet TV client software—is quickly coming to the Web. Brightcove will soon be offering such streams to its video publishers using BitTorrent DNA.

Exclusive: MapQuest Plays Catch-Up With Launch of Beta — AOL's MapQuest may be the market-leading map site by a long shot (with 50 million monthly visitors versus 30 million for Google Maps), but it is still playing catch-up when it comes to features, functionality, and mash-up capabilities.

Internet Recession Watch: Falling Ads, Taxes, Housing — New Items: The reprieve of the past 10 days is over. Yesterday, Nielsen reported that spending by the top 10 web customers dropped in September vs. August. Homebuilder Beazer said that a whopping 68% of customer sales contracts were cancelled in Q3.

X-Wing: What really happened — Those of you who recall the sadly shortened launch of the model X-Wing Fighter last week will be glad to know that we now have the truth. Carry on. — This entry was posted on Friday, October 12th, 2007 at 3:28 pm and is filed under Tags: funny, rockets, video, x-wing.

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